Page 82 of Renegade Queen

“You’re going to need to do it quickly then,” Maddox told us. “We’ve got company.”

My head swung to look where his voice had come from. My eyes widened in alarm as I did. They’d figured out it was a false trail then.

“Hurry,” Fizzle flapped, joining us back on the ground as he darted toward Alyssa. “The Endless are coming; you have to move now.”

His eyes widened as he looked at Dean’s unconscious form lying on the ground.

“You have to leave him.” Fizzle spun to look at Alyssa, who reared back in shock. “Carrying him will only slow you down. If you want to escape, you need to leave him here. They’ll take him to the other one. It won’t be the end; you can rescue them both.”

Alyssa was shaking her head. I understood her refusal, but the owl gryphon was making sense. We were stuck here with no way out and an unstoppable army bearing down on us.

“There’s always a way,” Alyssa muttered. “Remember. You told me that when you pushed me through that portal. There’s always a way, Fizzle.”

“We don’t leave people behind, cat,” Maddox snapped.

My eyes moved back to the horizon. There were so many of them. So many more than last time. We had nowhere to go; even if we did, there was no way to get there. With the river rushing at our back and the open grasslands beyond, there wasn’t even any hope of finding shelter unless we went deep into the wilding forest. Even then, there was no guarantee that The Endless wouldn’t follow us inside.

“Tank, Tank, please,” she begged. “Pick him up.”

I moved without question; of course, I’d do it for her. But as I held Dean in my arms, I couldn’t help but look around in uncertainty. She had to have seen an exit that I wasn’t considering. Did she have some form of magic that would get us through this? That had to be it, right? Alyssa had a plan; she had to have one.

I was steps away from the bridge when her words made me glance back at her in question.

“There’s always a way,” she said quietly.

But when she looked up and her eyes locked with mine, the resignation I saw there was my only warning that I would hate what happened next. The sudden shove to my chest was the second. There was a moment when my body felt weightless, and then I plunged into the icy waters, my hands desperately clinging to Dean’s unconscious form. At least I’d had the forethought to take a deep breath before the cold, raging waters of the river closed in around me.

I kicked like hell to try and breach the surface again, but it was useless. Instead, I tumbled through the rushing current of the river as it dragged me away.

Drowning wasn’t precisely the exit I had in mind, but hopefully, there was a step two to this plan that didn’t include death.

Epilogue

Damon

Seven Days Ago

My breath wheezed out of my lungs, and my shoulders burned with how I’d been chained to the wall. I had no idea how long I’d been here. The journey to this place was pretty much a blur. At first, I’d hoped to bleed out and join the rest of my team wherever it was that fallen soldiers went.

But then I remembered what I had to fight for.

I remembered the family I had to get back to.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed up on the tips of my toes to take some of the strain off my shoulder joints. I needed a plan to get out of this place, and I couldn’t do that while pain and sickness clouded my mind.

I couldn’t do much about the wet rasp of each breath or the thick smell of infection from the deep claw marks down the left side of my body right now. But I could try and lessen the pain.

My eyes scanned the dimly lit cell as I tried to figure out what I could use to my advantage. There was nothing much except the mould and whatever was scratching in the corner. I was pretty certain it was waiting for me to die, so it could have its next meal. Call me a bastard if you wanted, but I intended on letting it starve.

A pinch of pain in my ankle had my gaze trailing down my body. At first, I assumed whatever the critter was had decided to get a head start while the meat was still fresh. It took a while for my eyes to focus, but when they did, and there was nothing there, I frowned in confusion.

Rolling my ankle to the side, I tested my boot and felt it again.

And then my heart soared.

There was still a knife in my boot. They hadn’t searched me for weapons before slinging me in here.

This was it. This was my chance.